shit happens

🫰🏻🫰🏻🫰🏻

And while I can nitpick inaccuracies all day, the strength of a movie must be its strength as a movie. Adaptations must change things and that's fine. We can judge a movie by its own merit.

But while there's a lot to like in Nolans film, it's also *another* film where he's weird about women (using them as vague symbols of things we've lost), and has thinly veiled right leaning political messaging.

The film seems confused about some key themes- we should condemn the horrors of war, but also shame those who are too young or who hesitate to pick up a sword. And the way Antonious (a child at the time) avoids the war by having a child of a lower class (Sinon) take his place is condemnable....but Odysseus owns slaves and we just won't mention that.

Athena is somehow both the totem that connects Odysseus and Penelope, but also the specter of his War Crimes guilt. So, what, his guilt over Troy is what binds him to Penelope? How, exactly? (Gotta have a dead woman haunting the narrative somehow, I guess.)

It's a movie where no one is really allowed to be noble or clever, and it never really seems sure what kind of violence is needed or monstrous.

It's a movie where, I guess, Odysseus does a bad thing and stays bad and feels bad but gets everything he wants while also being the cause of the Bronze Age Collapse. His great sin is using deception to raid a walled stronghold from the inside, killing a bunch of people, and desecrating a temple of Athena....then he goes home, desecrates another temple to Athena before using deception to raid a walled stronghold from the inside and kills a bunch of people. But you know, he'll sail to "The West" and civilization will, uh rise again eventually.

Queen Rhaenyra Targaryen, First of her name, Queen of the Andals, the Rhoynar and the First Men, Lady of the Seven Kingdoms, protector of the realm.

nothing would have happened if it weren't for you

HOUSE OF THE DRAGON (2022 – ) 1x09 "The Lord of the Tides" || 3x03 "Rhaenyra Triumphant"